Kronos Workforce Social - An Idea a Millennial in the Making!

One of the big, big pushes from KronosWorks this year was Kronos Workforce Social. It was mentioned heavily during Aron Ain's welcome announcement, and several sessions were also dedicated to the topic. The guest speaker was the "Award winning expert of chaos and change" Jeremy Gutsche. Jeremy's high energy oratory was well matched to this new Kronos offering. 

Workforce Social is an attempt by Kronos to move forward in a new and different way. The goal of this product is not to attract a specific market segment, but to attract a specific age group. Some of the features for Workforce Social (kind of a merge of Kronos and Twitter, Kritter!) are going to be really helpful for managers and for users. Things like quick blast posts and the tables and graphs that are available are pretty darn cool, but only go as far as a manager will take them. Other features, like polling may not get the traction Kronos envisions. I for one am unsure that this type of feature will be used commonly, as I'm not sure how often a manager will want to send out a poll, and how frequently employees will respond. That being said, I am not from the Millennial generation, and therefore I wasn't the intended audience for this product. 

And that leads me to another quick note. Being focused on those Millennials out there, what market does this product seem to attract? Well, my guess is retail. Retail attracts a younger workforce, both for managers and employees. This workforce is clearly more comfortable with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all of the other social media sites out there. (And the Kronos Consulting world is starting to see more of them too!) It is likely that this type of offering would create a certain level of "buzz" for this workforce, and will improve overall employee knowledge of the day to day activities in an organization, AS WELL AS, getting that workforce to take care of things like daily punches, Kronos schedule review and filling out of forms that they have to do now. 

Will Kronos Workforce Social gain traction with Millennials?

Will organizations see value in aligning with a specific group within their workforce? 

Can Workforce Social be effective in multiple markets that don't reflect a heavily Millennial-based workforce?

We can't know the answers to these questions...yet. We can be certain that Kronos has once again attempted to understand market segments and has come forward with a unique product to adapt itself to it. Few organizations have the size, intellectual heft, and market savvy to invest in this kind of effort.  Kronos has proven itself to be a leader by taking a chance on a product that may or may not prove useful in the workforce management segment. There is value in researching this workforce in and of itself. Going through the exercise of building this product may help improve the Timekeeper, Scheduler, Absence Management and all other products Kronos offers in the future. What will happen? Who knows, but it makes for a better time at KronosWorks, well, that and the great cookies.